Twenty Twenty

Who else in this world would grant her a "cheat code"? It had to be the System.

Perhaps because the System had been dormant for too long, she often forgot its existence, yet it likely operated in the background, quietly securing the resources she needed for her conquest.

If her beauty wasn't enough, it would add wealth.

But could money really help her sleep with Fu Tingyun? And how? By throwing money at him? Fu Tingyun was a Sword Venerable, not a gigolo.

Su Xiaoyuan wanted to discuss the strategy with the System, but since it had sprung such a massive cheat on her, she had no idea how long it would remain dormant this time. She tried calling out "System" in her mind, but as expected, there was no response.

When the System finally woke up, she would have to have a serious talk with it. It needed to stop acting on its own and stuffing her with these useless cheat codes.

Su Xiaoyuan whispered to Ruan Mianmian, "I think I know where this mineral vein came from."

Ruan Mianmian’s eyes widened. "You do?"

Su Xiaoyuan nodded. "But I can't say. I'm sorry."

"It's fine, it's fine. You must have your reasons for not saying. As long as you know the source, it’s not a problem."

Su Xiaoyuan asked Shopkeeper Zhao, "May I ask where this mineral vein is located?"

Shopkeeper Zhao smiled. "Forgive me, but I cannot disclose that for the time being. The original owner specifically requested confidentiality. However, Fairy Su, you need not worry; the annual yield will be deposited into your account. Should you wish to sell the vein, our sect will also help you find a buyer."

As expected, the source was obscure. The System must have used some special method, and she had no idea if it was safe.

"I don't need this much money. Can I return it?"

"The mineral vein is already registered under your name, Fairy Su."

Shopkeeper Zhao left behind three million in "interest" and departed with his retinue of guards.

Realizing it was a System-issued cheat, Su Xiaoyuan stopped worrying. She picked up the box and left the Foreign Affairs Hall.

On the way back, Ruan Mianmian was beside herself with excitement. "Xiaoyuan, am I dreaming? That’s an entire mineral vein! Any sect or noble family could boast for ten thousand years if they owned one, and you have one all to yourself!"

"Why are you so calm, Xiaoyuan?" Ruan Mianmian grabbed her arm and shook her. "You haven't been scared silly by happiness, have you?"

Su Xiaoyuan shook her head. "Having that much money is useless to me."

Ruan Mianmian exclaimed, "How could you not like money?! I can't even imagine how happy I would be if I had a mineral vein!"

Su Xiaoyuan looked at her. "When I… when I’m gone in the future, how about I leave the vein to you?"

Ruan Mianmian turned her head, looking at her suspiciously. "Xiaoyuan, what's wrong with you? You've been acting strange since this morning. Don't scare me. What are you planning?"

Su Xiaoyuan hurriedly said, "Don't worry, I'm really fine. But my cultivation is low, so my lifespan is definitely much shorter than yours."

A cultivator's lifespan was directly tied to their cultivation level. Ruan Mianmian had reached the Golden Core stage in her twenties; if she kept cultivating, she could live for a thousand years or more, with no upper limit.

But Su Xiaoyuan was only in this world to conquer Immortal Venerable Lingyue. All her points were sunk into beauty by the System; her spiritual roots and meridians were only slightly better than a mortal's. A normal life would end around a hundred years.

"Pah, pah, pah! Who wants your lousy mine!" Ruan Mianmian stomped her foot in frustration. "If your spiritual roots aren't good, you should practice the Joyous Union techniques. Why else would you join the Cloud-Rain Sect? Just harvest the cultivation of someone powerful, wouldn't that work?"

"If you really have no other choice, I'll let you harvest me. I'll give you half my cultivation, and we can stay together forever."

"Mianmian..." Su Xiaoyuan hugged her, her nose stinging, and she couldn't help but bury her face in her friend's shoulder and cry.

Ruan Mianmian was so startled she didn't know where to put her hands. "Xiaoyuan, are you really okay?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Su Xiaoyuan sniffled, embarrassed as she wiped the damp marks off her best friend's shoulder with her sleeve. "I’m just... a little homesick lately."

Ruan Mianmian breathed a sigh of relief. "You silly girl! Once you reach the Inner Sect, you can leave the sect grounds. When that happens, I'll accompany you back home."

"Okay." Su Xiaoyuan curled her lips into a smile, turning away to wipe her eyes before more tears could fall.

"Maybe one day you really will be able to harvest Immortal Venerable Lingyue! You're so rich now!" Ruan Mianmian said.

Su Xiaoyuan chuckled. "Does he let people harvest him just because they have money?"

"Well, no. He's even richer than you."

Su Xiaoyuan: "How detestable!"

Ruan Mianmian: "Let's condemn him!"

Su Xiaoyuan rubbed her eyes, took the exquisite box from her small bag, opened the lid, pulled out one piece to tuck into her bag, and shoved the remaining two along with the box into Ruan Mianmian's arms. "Take these."

Ruan Mianmian jumped back two steps as if burned. "Why are you giving me so much money?!"

"I have nothing to spend it on, and there’s more coming next month anyway."

Conquering the Sword Venerable was a high-risk job. She considered this money workers' compensation; she might as well take it, and she could give it to whoever she wanted.

Ruan Mianmian naturally refused, but Su Xiaoyuan, who was usually easygoing, would not budge this time. "Go do something that makes you happy and spend it for me. For example..."

She gave a rare, mischievous smirk and winked. "Hire a few people to beat up that scumbag Song Jinshu and his new lover."

Ruan Mianmian wrinkled her nose. "At his level, one million is enough to hire someone to kill him ten times over."

Finally, after much pestering, Ruan Mianmian accepted one of the pieces.

...

Fu Tingyun was facing a dilemma.

Su Xiaoyuan was the first unsolvable mystery of his life. If she didn't like money, why did she spin in circles with joy over a single piece of Sea Essence Stone last time? Yet now, with endless wealth, there wasn't even a smile on her face.

After returning, she had tucked the two ink-slips into a box without even glancing at them again.

"Fu Tingyun," she called him listlessly.

Fu Tingyun felt his puppet heart jump violently.

But she only said, "I need to practice the 'Communicating Through Eyes' exercise."

Fu Tingyun didn't need her to give the command; he moved a small round stool from the window and sat down in front of her.

The young girl looked into his eyes and began her practice meticulously, struggling to force an alluring expression.

In the past, she had been full of mistakes, always judged as failing by the formation. But whenever she gazed into his eyes while making those strange faces, her clear, bright eyes would always shimmer with light, full of vivacity.

Now, those eyes had lost their spark.

"Still not good enough, right?" She lowered her lashes.

The formation judged her as Grade D, Level 2—a failure.

Fu Tingyun quickly tampered with the formation, pursed his lips, and said, "Grade B, Level 1. You passed."

A flash of light appeared in Su Xiaoyuan’s eyes. "Eh?"

Fu Tingyun, like a man trying to start a fire with damp wood who suddenly sees a spark, felt his entire puppet frame lean forward involuntarily.

But that spark vanished in an instant.

He soon regretted tampering with the formation. Because once she knew she had passed, she didn't look at him again.

She said a soft "That's good," then turned to wash up.

Then she lay on the bed, staring blankly.

Fu Tingyun knew from the sound of her breathing that she wasn't asleep. She was like a puppet drained of all spiritual energy, lacking the strength to move, yet still awake, unable to draw spiritual energy from anywhere.

She could still maintain her usual demeanor in front of others, but as soon as she returned to her small room and finished her mandatory homework and review, she would sit by the window in a daze or lie there doing nothing.

She didn't seem to be angry with him; she would greet him when she came and went, but she would never again blink those bright eyes, sharing her daily trivialities with him, let alone babbling to him while lying on the bed.

By the third day, Su Xiaoyuan’s condition had not improved.

In truth, she didn't look sad; she hadn't cried since that day. If one hadn't seen what she was like before, one would think she was perfectly normal.

But Fu Tingyun had seen it.

That day, while Su Xiaoyuan was out for her lessons, he walked every riverbank and stream across all nine islands of the Cloud-Rain Sect, searching for a rock that looked like a cat.

Clearly, he didn't find one that was identical.

On the fourth day, he took out her easel, drawing board, brushes, and paints and placed them on the table.

When Su Xiaoyuan returned and saw them, she only said, "You brought them out again," and paid them no further mind, not even flipping through her old works.

Her leather-bound paper-core notebook, which she always carried with her, sat on the table covered in a thin layer of dust.

On the fifth day, Fu Tingyun caught a "cat."

Strictly speaking, it wasn't a cat, but a Luo-Luo beast.

Cats only existed in the mortal realm, and the journey there and back took too long; he wasn't comfortable leaving Su Xiaoyuan alone. So, he made a round trip that same day to a neighboring continent and caught a three-hundred-year-old Luo-Luo beast that had attained sentience but couldn't yet take human form. Its original size was larger than Su Xiaoyuan's entire courtyard and house combined.

But since Immortal Venerable Lingyue said it was a cat, it had to be a cat.

He forced it to transform into a flat-faced cat according to Su Xiaoyuan’s drawing.

However, he was clever enough to let it keep the stripes and colors of its original fur—if he had drawn an identical yellow cat, it would have been too deliberate.

The cat, under the pressure of Fu Tingyun’s might, crouched honestly at the gate for a day, and upon seeing the little girl in pink, let out a "meow" in a high-pitched voice that brought shame to a divine beast.

The moment she saw the cat, Su Xiaoyuan’s eyes suddenly brightened. She immediately squatted down to stroke its head. "What a strange little kitty! Why are you here? Oh, I know."

Fu Tingyun: Know what?

Su Xiaoyuan saw at once that the cat must have been sent by the System. No matter how rich in resources and talent the cultivation world was, it surely couldn't breed a hybrid of a Tabby and a British Shorthair.

Was this palliative care?

But she was going to die in less than a year; she wasn't fit to keep any pets.

She went back into the room, dug out a jar of unsalted dried fish that had miraculously escaped Fu Tingyun’s destructive reach, found a ceramic plate that had also survived, dumped them all inside, and set it on the ground outside the door.

She squatted to the side watching the cat finish the fish, resisting the urge to pet it. "I'm sorry, I can't keep you. Go back and find your original owner."

The next day, when Su Xiaoyuan came home from class, the cat was there again. This time, it was limping on a front leg, as if bitten by some wild beast.

Su Xiaoyuan hurriedly carried it into the room, carefully cleaned the wound, applied medicine, bandaged it, fed it, and gave it water. After taking care of it for three days and seeing it could walk, she carried it outside. "Be careful next time and don't get bitten again."

The cat still wandered in front of her door every day. Su Xiaoyuan had no choice but to cut a cat door in the courtyard gate and leave the food and water bowls in the yard, begrudgingly keeping it as a stray.

Fu Tingyun noticed that while she didn't dislike the "cat," she never held it and rarely touched it. He was secretly satisfied, yet despised the cat for being so useless.

With the cat, Su Xiaoyuan was a bit busier, but she still hadn't returned to her former self.

Fu Tingyun’s agitation grew with each passing day.

If burning down a spiritual vein could relight the spark in her eyes, he would have done it without hesitation.

But he couldn't.

You can force a person to die, but you cannot force a person to be happy again.

That night, during meditation, he went to the corner where that strand of red thread hid—ever since that night, it had not come near him.

"What must I do to make her the way she was before?" he asked it.

It curled itself into a ball, tucking its ends firmly into the center.

Fu Tingyun felt a surge of impatience. "Come here."

The ball of thread only shrank further into the corner.

Fu Tingyun entered the formation and forcibly gripped it in his palm.

The ball of thread shrank smaller and smaller, almost turning back into a single drop of blood.

"Do you hate me that much?" Fu Tingyun felt the blood drop thrashing in his palm, as if trying to escape.

"Hate me if you must." He tightened his hand slightly.

At that moment, he suddenly heard a soft gasp from the room.

He hurriedly released his hand, and the blood drop "whooshed" away into the corner, sticking motionless to a formation pillar.

Fu Tingyun immediately ended his meditation, stood up, and rushed into the room.

He saw the girl lying on her back, knees bent, her forehead glistening with cold sweat.

A scent of blood emanated from the bedding.

"Did I hurt you?" For the first time in his life, Fu Tingyun felt at a loss.

"No..." the girl's voice was thin as a thread, clearly in great pain.

He had only cupped the blood drop in his palm without using force; who would have thought she was so fragile that a mere touch would cause such injury?

A thought flashed through his mind.

Was she dying?

Had he accidentally killed her?

His heartbeat suddenly became erratic.

"Where are you hurt?" Fu Tingyun lifted the quilt, his nose twitching as he searched for the source of the bloody scent.

"It really isn't an injury!" She sounded annoyed, grabbing at the quilt.

Fu Tingyun felt slightly relieved; if she still had the strength to fight for the quilt, the injury couldn't be too severe.

He threw the quilt aside completely, turned her over, and found a small patch of crimson on her trousers. He frowned. "You say you're not hurt, but you're bleeding."

Su Xiaoyuan was in tears. "I said it's not an injury! It's menstruation, my period, my 'kui-water'... you puppet, you are really... really impossible!"